


Lucky Number Thirteen

by MFG2930



Series: The Doctors Visitors [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Deep chats with yourself, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-31 06:08:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21093626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MFG2930/pseuds/MFG2930
Summary: Two old travelers sit across from each other“I was going to ask, do you travel alone?” He asks looking away from her now, his expression sorrowful.“No, not anymore. I have my fam now. Ryan, his grandad Graham, although Ryan still won’t call him grandad and Yaz, she’s brilliant…” and she rambles on for a good long while about her new ‘fam’ and there adventures across space, careful not to give him too many details to remember. He’s not really  listening though, staring into space, thinking.





	Lucky Number Thirteen

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first ever fic on AO3 so go easy on me but any comments are much appreciated.

They had been sitting there for a good long while, facing each other on the sofa’s in the library. Books and tomes piled high around them, filled with adventures. Most of them the quiet travellers had seen first hand. The room quiet and the air still. Neither had the courage to say anything to the other, both almost transfixed by the others existence within the same space as the themselves.

It wasn’t until almost an hour of silence that the man cleared his throat to speak. And was instantly interrupted as his companion chosen his moment to speak as well.  
“Do you travel…”  
“How can you possibly sit so still?” She questioned him.  
“What, I’m sorry what?” He looked almost perplexed by her question.  
“How can you sit so still?” She poses the question again. “ Your like a great grumpy gargoyle made of stone, its not natural.”  
He makes a face, like he’s trying to smile and failing to find the follow through.  
“Oh, don’t do that, it looks even worse, those eyebrows were built for scowling”  
He sighs, is this really what he’s like in the future, outspoken loud, almost funny.  
“Fine” he goes back to his resting face, which looks an awful lot more natural.

“You asked me a question before. When I interrupted you? What was it?” She enquires moving from sitting with her feet dangling over the sofa to cross legged in her lap, her large coat billowing out around her almost like a cape. She looks at him curiously.  
“I was going to ask, do you travel alone?” He asks looking away from her now, his expression sorrowful.  
“No, not anymore. I have my fam now. Ryan, his grandad Graham, although Ryan still won’t call him grandad and Yaz, she’s brilliant…” and she rambles on for a good long while about her new ‘fam’ and there adventures across space, careful not to give him too many details to remember. He’s not really listening though, staring into space, thinking.  
“Your gonna get them hurt you know, its inevitable” He ponders almost flippantly.  
“…” she doesn’t get a word in before he continues  
“Worse scenario they’ll end up dead on some planet far from home, or displaced in time, best case they end up like Donna” she winces at the mention of her name, they’re best friend so altered and humbled by her experiences unchanged once they were taken away, but he continues “no memories of the pain we caused them, or made into a soldier like Martha, like Mickey” and he pauses he had gotten himself worked up standing from the sofa “Like..like Clara” and he crumples all the fight knocked right out of him as if by an almighty blow.

She sits up straighter having watched his tirade, her faced crumpled with unshed tears, not for herself for what she had lost but for him, knowing it was only going to get worse for him, before it got better.  
“You’ve just remembered Clara” she half whispers, reverently understanding more now his aloofness.  
“Yes” he whispers back holding back his own angst in favour of not scaring his older self, she seems so much happier than him but he knows in himself that their happiness is fragile.  
“But she’s not gone Doctor” he looks up at her from his hands, where they had been clasped around his face trying to hold his misery in. It’s the first time she called him Doctor. She continues “she’s out there in space travelling around with Me, having adventures, Gallifrey the long way round” she smiles weakly at him.  
He smiles weakly back, its looks less unnatural but still strained.

She stands beginning to pace, she has resigned to giving herself a pep talk.  
“Do you know why don’t travel alone?” She asks him. He already knows the answer, she can see it in the way he looks at her not speaking “because our wife told us not too, when the Ponds…” she lets out a shaking breath “got displaced and all we could do was think about our own sadness, when she had just lost her parents, she selflessly told us to never travel alone, to promise her that and I don’t break promises.” She finishes, a little pleased with her speech.  
“Rule One” he mumbles quietly  
“The doctor lies” She finishes the sentence for him. Now its her turn to scowl, at him, at herself for every making such a rule in the first place. “Not to her, never to her not anymore”  
“Just like that?” He asks  
“Yeah…just like that” She sits next to him now, a hand on his shoulder. “Letting people in is not weakness, grumpy. It’s strength” She smiles now, so white its almost blinding. He likes this version of himself he decides. She’s a bit all over the place like bow tie but finds in within herself to be free, something none of his other regenerations have been able to achieve.  
“And this time Eyebrows, my fam know what they were getting themselves into, I gave them a choice.” She slings a arm round his shoulders. “It does get better. That’s something I promise you”

Maybe she really was the best of them all, lucky number 13.


End file.
